Happy 1st Anniversary to us!!

It's crazy to think that it's been a year, but it has!  One year since the Best.Day.Ever. and Mr & Mrs.  One year since one of the best weekend's we could ever have hoped for!  We've talked a lot about all of the details of the entire weekend lately, the rehearsal luncheon at The Pit, which was amazing, the drinks at Boylan Bridge Brew Pub later that day, which was so much fun, and The Day itself.  We couldn't have been happier with how things turned out, including choosing each other for life!

It's been a wonderful first year and we are very excited about many, many more years to come!  Obviously our first year was a big one, with the addition of The Lloyd, our future addition still growing and making the decision to move to Nashville, but we're ready to make Nashville our home as the Mahoney family grows!

We celebrated our anniversary with a nice lunch out in the Vanderbilt area, followed by some house hunting (a necessary part of the day as we're still trying to find the perfect place!), and then an AMAZING dinner later that evening at The Stockyard, near downtown.  It was a fabulous meal and a wonderful day overall, definitely how we like to spend our time (eating, having wine/"mocktails", etc.!)!!

To the love of my life, thank you for being the best husband ever!  To everyone else that spends time with us, thank you for putting up with us and for loving us!! :-)  Cheers to many more years of happiness!!

Baby Mahoney!!

Well, it's official: we are expecting a Baby Mahoney in November! 

Baby looks like this, as of Monday:

Kicking those little legs!

3-D and already camera-shy :-)

13 1/2 weeks, kicking and flailing like crazy!

Baby's current estimated due date is November 16th (Happy birthday to me, going to be the best present ever!!)!  We are really excited and possibly very overwhelmed, but doing our best to take it all in as we go. 

As Mike noted, we're going to be having a "Volunteer Baby", hopefully Tennessee will be great for Mike, Myself, the future Mahoney and the pet Mahoney's!

Also, I look like this lately:

12 Weeks

13 Weeks

Just in case you thought we might be making it up :-)  Mike is going to be an amazing Daddy, I can't wait to see him with our "Mini Mahoney" (that's for you, Meghan!)!

Told you 2012 was going to be EVEN bigger than 2011!! :-)

England, 2012!

So, besides Mr. & Mrs. Aspey's big day, we had a fantastic 9 days in England this year!  Mike & I started our trip with a few days in the Lake District, specifically Bowness on Lake Windemere.  Growing up, the Lake District was one of my favorite places, so it was really exciting to spend a few days there with Mike, showing him around and relaxing together on holiday!

The Cranleigh Hotel

Beautiful tulips everywhere!

Lake Windemere

We took a Lake Cruise around Lake Windemere to the south end of the lake, where the Lakeside Aquarium is located and spent a really fun afternoon there before taking the boat back to Bowness.

On the lake cruise :-)

The otter had had enough of my picture taking

We had a amazing food the entire time we were there, and our first night there found a delicious Indian Restaurant called Mela.  It was fantastic!  We also visited the oldest pub in the Lake District, "The Hole in T' Wall", seriously 400 hundred years old!  It was great, we loved it!!


Indian food!

After taking the train back from Windemere, we spent an amazing day touring the Manchester United Football Stadium, Old Trafford!  It was like Christmas for my Daddy, but we all thought it was really cool, the history in the team is really impressive.  Our tour guide has worked at Manchester United for 54 years, can you imagine?!  Now that is someone's that dedicated to their team! 

Daddy & Mike at Old Trafford

Home Team Locker Room

Old Trafford Museum & Stadium Tour!

We got to see family, see some places we always loved growing up (Blackpool is the Coney Island of Northwest England, says Mike Mahoney :-) ) and had a generally wonderful time!  We always wish there were more time to see more, do more, etc. but that's always the case with a good time.  I miss our family a lot, so it's always wonderful to spend as much time as possible together when we're there! 

Smith Family

Daddy & Uncle Andrew :-)

Pepsi Max

Mike in Blackpool aka Coney Island :-)

Blackpool promenade

Fantastic holiday for 2012!!!

Ultimately we knew we had to come home, so we could spring Lloyd & Milton out of Jail the kennel and pack up our life here to move to Nashville in just a few short weeks!  May is going to be an exciting month!! :-)

Mr. & Mrs. Helen & Jon Aspey!

This time last weekened we were all still recovering from Helen & Jon's wedding the day before!  Already a week in to marriage, they're blissfully enjoying Crete, Greece, while the rest of us reminisce on what a fantastic day it was! 

So the basics go like this:
We got ready, Helen looked AMAZING! 

We laced her in to ther dress, which was no small fete as she's tiny and there was a lot of lacing to be done to keep the dress in place (no one wants to be "that" Bride in church ;-) )

After arriving at the church in the most lovely wedding bus ever, and hearing the bell's ring around the village for them, they had a beautiful, traditional Church of England ceremony:

Sidenote:  I know I do this for a living, but sometimes I forget that every culture, country, religion does things differently and this ceremony was no exception.  My favorite differences were that the Bridesmaids followed Helen & Uncle Freddie in to the church, which makes total sense, hence the "bride's maids" or maids in waiting.  Second, which I don't think I realized at Mike & I's wedding in the same church, they don't have a "you may now kiss the Bride" moment.  Kind of a shame, but being in the Church of England, not really surprising either.  I think I've watched "Four Weddings and a Funeral" one too many times and don't know what's reality and what's production anymore :-)  Call me a floozie, but that was my favorite bit at our wedding in Raleigh!  :-)

Anyway, after the ceremony (did I mention that Helen's AT LEAST the fourth generation of our family to be married in that church?!  Pretty amazing if you really think about it!), there were lots of pictures before heading to the reception at the DeVere Hotel at Reebok Stadium, Bolton Football Team's home stadium.  There was a drinks reception, followed by a delicious meal, and then an evening reception.  None of this "four our maximum timeframe for a reception" shenanigans, the reception started around 3:30p and ended around 1:00a ( I can't lie, Mike & I gave up around 12:00a, what can I say, Mike is married to an old lady these days!)!!  Everyone had a fabulous time partying the night away!

It was a beautiful, perfect wedding day (it didn't even rain!!) and we are so happy for Helen & Jon!  Our family is so excited to have Jon join our madness, and I'm sure his family feels the same way!  We can't wait to see professional pictures from the big day and to spend the next 50 years celebrating with the Aspey's! 

Congratulations, you two!! xx
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